Julien Cornell, 83, The Defense Lawyer In Ezra Pound Case

Published: December 7, 1994

Julien Cornell, a civil liberties lawyer who defended Ezra Pound against charges of treason after World War II, died on Friday in Arden Hill Hospital in Goshen, N.Y. He was 84 and lived in Central Valley, N.Y.

The cause was cancer, said his son J. Martin Cornell of West Nyack, L.I.

It was the successful defense plea that the poet was insane that saved Pound from facing a possible death sentence for participating in pro-Fascist radio broadcasts to North America from Italy during the war. In those broadcasts, Pound denounced the Allied war effort and its political leaders and he praised Mussolini and Hitler.

Pound was arrested by American troops in 1945 and brought back to the United States to stand trial. But after evaluation by a four psychiatrists, he was judged to be paranoid and unfit to stand trial. Mr. Cornell said in his 1966 book about the case, "The Trial of Ezra Pound," "He simply could not comprehend the realities of his situation."

The court ordered Pound to be held indefinitely. He was confined to St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington for 12 years. His release, in 1958, came about largely because of petitioning by literary figures, chiefly Robert Frost.

During the war, Mr. Cornell also defended many young men who had refused to register for the draft on religious and moral grounds, including pacifists and Jehovah's Witnesses. He wrote two books about his experience, "The Conscientious Objector and the Law" (1943) and "Conscience and the State" (1944).

A native of Brooklyn, Mr. Cornell received his undergraduate degree from Swarthmore College in 1930 and his law degree from Yale University in 1933. He practiced law in Manhattan until 1950, when he moved to Central Valley to practice.

Besides his son, survivors include his wife of 62 years, the former Virginia Stratton; two daughters, Sheila Lunke of Boulder, Colo., and Portia, of Canton, Conn.; another son, E. Kevin, of Bethesda, Md.; 12 grandchildren and 4 great-grandchildren.